By W. Scott Fillebrown, President and CEO, ACD, and Francois Monette, Co-President of Cogiscan Inc.Traceability should be required when an OEM chooses an EMS provider. Without traceability, there is no real way to perform a thorough defect analysis. In some instances a defect may appear to be an assembly issue, but once a date/lot code comparison across all affected serial numbers ...

By the Staff of STI Electronics, Inc.Is it a contract manufacturer? Is it a school and certification facility? Is it a distributor? The answer is "Yes" to all three questions for Madison, Alabama-based STI Electronics, Inc., a family-owned company that started out as a training and consulting firm. Founded by Jim D. Raby ...

Magnetic effects within Herbertsmithite crystals, where green regions represent higher scattering of neutrons from NIST's Multi-Angle Crystal Spectrometer (MACS). Scans of typical highly-ordered magnetic materials show only isolated spots of green, while disordered materials show uniform color over the entire sample. The in-between nature of this data shows some order within the disorder, implying the unusual magnetic effects within a spin liquid. Credit: NIST.

By Chad Boutin, NISTGaithersburg, MD — A research team including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has confirmed long-standing suspicions among physicists that electrons in a crystalline structure called a kagome (kah-go-may) lattice can form a "spin liquid," a novel quantum state of matter in which the electrons' magnetic orientation remains in a constant state of change. (T.H. Han, J.S. Helton, S. Chu, D.G. Nocera, J.A. Rodriguez-Rivera, C. Broholm and Y.S. Lee. "Fractionalized excitations in the spin liquid state of a kagome lattice antiferromagnet"; Nature, 492, Dec. 20, 2012, doi: 10.1038/nature11659.)

Glen Allen, VA — The grid-storage market will reach $6.1 billion (USD) by 2018 making energy storage one of the fastest growing opportunities in the smart grid industry, according to Industry analyst firm NanoMarkets' newly published report titled, "Batteries and Supercapacitors for the Smart Grid-2013." ...

Las Vegas, NV — Want to buy a fuel cell online? They're available now (or will be soon) from Brookstone's web site, and while it won't power your whole house, it will be available as an emergency charging source for your power-hungry mobile devices.

MENTOR, OH - Libra Industries, a privately held electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider, is pleased to announce that its Dallas facility has passed the recertification audits for its ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 13485:2012 certifications. With the recertification, Libra Industries – Dallas is equipped to serve the aviation, space and defense as well as medical device industries with a proven quality management system.

Saint-Egrève, France - Vi TECHNOLOGY, a leading provider of inspection solutions for PCB assembly, is pleased to announce the appointment of Miguel Arroyo as its newest Sales – Applications Engineer. Based in the U.S., Arroyo is a professional engineer with diversified experience in advance electronic manufacturing, with extensive background in electronics manufacturing processes.

Arroyo started out in the industry at Intel in 1994. He joins the Vi TECHNOLOGY team with a great deal of experience from respected companies including Honeywell International and Sparton Electronics.

KALISPELL, MT - ClassOne Technology (www.classone.com), manufacturer of advanced wet processing equipment for ≤200mm substrates announced the formation of a Board of Advisors. This body will be made up of highly-regarded senior executives from the semiconductor industry who will provide their perspective and guidance to ClassOne as it navigates the expansion of its operations.